Day 4: Wild and Wierd

Beastie Boys - Licensed to Ill
This is just great fun to listen to! From the rocking Fight for your Right, to the whimsical Girls, there are great beats and spoonfuls of good humour on this record. You get the impression from the word go that the Beastie Boys are here in your face to have fun and don't care how they go about doing it. Its very 1980s and it sounds dated but its terribly infectious. Bright beats, rock guitars, and gangsta rap by white boys ... shouldn't work but since they don't take themselves seriously, it does. Like the Above the Law album I listened to its hard to not bob your head up and down while the Boys shout and rap their way through 13 excellent tracks. Great fun! (Side note: I was thinking "This guitar solo is scorching!" on Brooklyn, then discovered it was done by Kerry King of Slayer fame. How cool is that!)
Standout Tracks: Fight for your Right (Of course!), Girls, No Sleep til Brooklyn, She's Crafty




Tori Amos - Boys For Pele
This is like listening to Kevin Ayers again, but with a girl singing and better production quality. Some of the points in this album are pretty exquisite high points, and Tori Amos is certainly ambitious enough to pull it off. Most of it is just nuts. Some bits I can listen to and say, "Genius". Other parts, "WTF?". Often both sentiments at different points of the same song ... and anyone who writes a song called "Father Lucifer" must have some childhood religious issues she's not happy with. Lyrically bizarre ("Hello Mr Zebra, can I have your sweater" ... eh?), but musically quite interesting and in places it soars pretty high on the back of good orchestration and piano prowess. Her voice is pretty sexy too, and very easy on the male ear. All in all, a bizarre but actually not bad record that in the end I rather enjoyed.
Standout Tracks: Professional Widow, Hey Jupiter, Little Amsterdam (loved this one), Putting the Damage On





Only time for two today (been one of those days), but I did enjoy them both. Started an album by a band from Senegal, and that was going quite well, so look forward to the resume of that on Monday, but until then - have a pleasant weekend! I know I will .... because I won't be here.